What is AWS and cloud technology?

What I’ve found is, cloud is the future for almost every business and most of young people aren’t aware much about it.

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This article will talk about several sub-topics related to cloud technology and amazon web services(AWS) as follows:

• What is cloud?
• History of cloud computing.
• Which companies provide cloud services and the topmost in the market.
• What is AWS?
• What can you do with AWS?
• Criteria and way to get a cloud job.
• Bonus: Best courses for learning cloud in AWS.

What is cloud

Cloud, as the name might suggest, its’ not really cloud or something above in the air. It’s simply somebody else’s computer or more precisely, a server. Now, most of us don’t realise that we use cloud on a daily basis, without actually knowing what it is or how are we even using it?

Let’s say, you want to setup your business online by creating websites and storing the information provided by all your users. This, in typical early 90’s scenario would require several rooms for servers and for storage of data. This also depends upon your size of business. You will also require manager, administrators, engineers and, professionals for managing and administrating the servers.

Okay, so on a smaller scale, creating a blogging platform as a part of your secondary source of income you would need a i7 core processor and a proper storage which could keep your data and other information. Now, its a lot of work because along with getting new content you would also need to manage your little baby server and organise the data on a daily basis. And also, keeping your server up 24*7? It’s still a lot of work, isn’t it?

History of cloud computing

The story of Cloud computing so far…

• 1999: Salesforce.com launches CRM as a service
• 2002: Amazon launches AWS for developers
• 2006: AWS launches pay-per-use commercial cloud with S3 (storage) and EC2 (computer) services
• 2008: Google launches App Engine offering developers a scalable application environment
• 2010: Microsoft launches Azure IaaS (Beta version)
• 2011: Apple launches iCloud and Microsoft buys Skype
• 2015: Global Cloud industry exceeds $100 Billion revenues
• 2016: AWS exceeds $12 Billion in IaaS/PaaS revenues and now offers 70 distinct Cloud services
• 2017: Microsoft passes $10 Billion in SaaS revenue. Salesforce is #2 SaaS player with $8.5 Billion revenues.
• 2018: Global Cloud IT infrastructure spend exceeds traditional IT
• 2019: SaaS market exceeds $110 Billion revenues.
• 2020: Total Cloud services revenues exceed $250 Billion.

Which companies provide cloud services and the topmost in the market?

Now, I hope you’ve got the idea most web hosting companies offer you. They offer you management of your platform, server, storage and professional security. So, you only have to focus on serving great content!

Cloud computing makes it easier, cheaper and faster to run state-of-the-art IT architectures in any type of company, large or small.Businesses benefit from cheaper, faster, more scalable IT resources in the Cloud and users get a better experience. A virtuous circle exists between software users and software developers in SaaS Clouds: developers can improve the software faster because they can see usage and performance data in real time. Meanwhile, users get the latest software upgrades as soon as they are released, without having to pay more or having to fiddle with clumsy downloads.

According to a report by Canalys shown in the below chart, in Q4, 2020, AWS cloud grew by 28% and Azure, Google, and Alibaba clouds grew 50%, 58%, and 54% respectively. As of this report, AWS has 31% of total cloud market share followed by Azure, Google, and Alibaba that have 20%, 7%, and 6% respectively.

Here is a list of my top 10 cloud service providers:

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
2. Microsoft Azure
3. Google Cloud
4. Alibaba Cloud
5. IBM Cloud
6. Oracle
7. Salesforce
8. SAP
9. Rackspace Cloud
10. VMWare

The following table summarises the top 3 key players and their offerings in the cloud computing world:

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an Amazon company that was launched in the year 2002. AWS is the most popular cloud service provider in the world.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 165 fully-featured services from data centers globally. This service is used by millions of customers.

AWS’s revenue in the year 2018 was $25.6 billion with a profit of $7.2 billion. The revenue is expected to grow to $33 billion in 2019.

AWS global availability

AWS offers the largest global footprint in the market. No other cloud provider offers as many regions or Availability Zones (AZs). This includes 78 AZs within 25 geographic regions around the world. Furthermore, AWS has announced plans for 9 more AZs and three more regions in Cape Town, Jakarta, and Milan.

In simple words AWS allows you to do the following things-

1. Running web and application servers in the cloud to host dynamic websites.
2. Securely store all your files on the cloud so you can access them from anywhere.
3. Using managed databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQL Server to store information.
4. Deliver static and dynamic files quickly around the world using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
5. Send bulk email to your customers.

Compute

1. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) — These are just the virtual machines in the cloud on which you have the OS level control. You can run whatever you want in them.
2. LightSail — If you don’t have any prior experience with AWS this is for you. It automatically deploys and manages compute, storage and networking capabilities required to run your applications.
3. ECS (Elastic Container Service) — It is a highly scalable container service to allows you to run Docker containers in the cloud.
4. EKS (Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes) — Allows you to use Kubernetes on AWS without installing and managing your own Kubernetes control plane. It is a relatively new service.
5. Lambda — AWS’s serverless technology that allows you to run functions in the cloud. It’s a huge cost saver as you pay only when your functions execute.
6. Batch — It enables you to easily and efficiently run batch computing workloads of any scale on AWS using Amazon EC2 and EC2 spot fleet.
7. Elastic Beanstalk — Allows automated deployment and provisioning of resources like a highly scalable production website.

Storage

1. S3 (Simple Storage Service) — Storage service of AWS in which we can store objects like files, folders, images, documents, songs, etc. It cannot be used to install software, games or Operating System.
2. EFS (Elastic File System) — Provides file storage for use with your EC2 instances. It uses NFSv4 protocol and can beused concurrently by thousands of instances.
3. Glacier — It is an extremely low-cost archival service to store files for a long time like a few years or even decades.
4. Storage Gateway — It is a virtual machine that you install on your on-premise servers. Your on-premise data can be backed up to AWS providing more durability.

Databases

1. RDS (Relational Database Service) — Allows you to run relational databases like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQL Server. These databases are fully managed by AWS like installing antivirus and patches.
2. DynamoDB — It is a highly scalable, high-performance NoSQL database. It provides single-digit millisecond latency at any scale.
3. Elasticache — It is a way of caching data inside the cloud. It can be used to take load off of your database by caching most frequent queries.
4. Neptune — It has been launched recently. It is a fast, reliable and scalable graph database service.
5. RedShift — It is AWS’s data warehousing solution that can be used to run complex OLAP queries.

Demand for AWS Jobs Outstrips Available Professionals

In the public cloud job market, there are between six to 12 times more job postings available than there are job seekers, and 60 percent of these job postings are AWS-related. Employers in the United States, for example, say that it’s quite a challenge finding professionals with cloud computing skills in general. This imbalance will continue to be the case for a long time to come.

Whether you’re already an experienced IT professional seeking to take your career in a new direction or new to cloud computing (or IT, for that matter), there are several reasons why you should consider AWS. And since AWS is the leading public cloud computing service that is widely adopted by organisations both large and small, then it also follows that learning AWS has become a necessity for IT professionals who want to secure their future careers.

How to Learn AWS

Now that you have some solid reasons why an AWS career can be beneficial, the next step is to find out how you can go about acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, and certifications for AWS.

There is an Abundance of AWS Learning Resources: Choose Wisely

Since AWS certifications were first introduced in 2013, a lot of resources have been made available ranging from books, manuals, courses, AWS practice exams, and AWS communities. These resources are all useful for those seeking to start and grow their career in AWS. However, choosing the right learning resource is critical since there is a lot to go through since some courses are simply better than others.

Bonus: AWS Certifications

AWS certifications are divided into four major categories — Foundational, Associate, Professional, and Specialty.

Choose a Career Path that Suits You Best

There are a lot of AWS career paths from which you can choose. The career path you want can be based on either:

• The Role: Such as cloud practitioner, operations, architect, and developer
• The Solution: Such as storage, machine learning, and AWS media services

You could also choose a specialty area on which to focus your attention and validate advanced skills in specific technical domains.

If you’re a cloud computing enthusiast, AWS certification training is a good move to future-proof your career, not just because there is a lot of available work but also because there are many ways you can fit into the IT work environment with the skills that you will learn.

Thank you!